Allen didn't have time to close his eyes.
The drop of blood fell too fast. He had barely finished calling that name in his heart when it came down, like a bead dropped from a great height, striking him squarely in the chest. There was no sound, and no splash. It seemed to pass through his clothes, through his skin, through his ribs, sinking straight into the innermost part of his body. Allen's whole body jerked on the stone slab, his back arching and then slamming down hard. It wasn't pain. It was a feeling that frightened him more than pain.
As if something had woken up inside his heart.
His mouth hung open, trying to draw a breath, but he couldn't make a single sound. All he could do was feel. The drop of blood spread through his chest like ink dripping into clear water, slowly seeping out in every direction. It was warm, not with his body heat but with some other warmth, as if someone had placed a small ember deep inside his body, and the ember had begun creeping, bit by bit, along his blood vessels, his meridians, and even finer things. He heard his heartbeat change. It had been beating wildly and fast, but once the drop of blood seeped in, his heartbeat actually slowed. Very slow, very heavy, as if someone were beating an old drum inside his chest. Every beat made his scalp tingle.
His eyes hadn't closed, but his vision had already scattered. What he saw looked as if soaked in water, warped and crooked. He saw the lines on the ceiling light up, saw three figures standing around the stone slab, saw his own body giving off an extremely faint glow from beneath the skin. The glow wasn't bright; it was like embers about to die, dark red, flowing slowly beneath his veins. He felt like a lamp forcibly lit while its wick was still wet, burning in fits and starts.
"The heartbeat has stabilized." Someone spoke. It was Vera. Her voice came from very far away, as if through a layer of water.
"So beautiful..." another voice said. It was Vivian. Her tone was as airy as ever, but the tail end of it was a little tight, as if she were hiding something. "Every time I see it, it feels like making a miracle."
"Miracles do not come without a price," Vera said.
"His body will not be able to bear it." The Demon King's voice came last, low and flat, as if speaking of something written long ago. "But even if he cannot bear it, he will have to."
Allen wanted to shout. Wanted to curse. Wanted them to shut up. He wasn't dead yet. He could still hear. What gave them the right to talk in that tone, as if he'd already become something being forged? But his mouth felt pasted shut, his tongue sunk to the bottom of his mouth, too heavy even to lift. He wanted to move a finger, but his fingers were like puppets with cut strings, none of them his own. The only thing he could still do was look. And the three drops of blood were slowly appearing directly above him.
He saw them.
The three drops of blood hovered above his chest and didn't fall right away. They were very close together, yet kept a little distance between them, like three living things wary of one another. The drop on the far left was deep red: Vera's. It was the heaviest, like a drop of old blood long congealed, its surface refracting a cold light, hanging there quietly without moving at all. A little right of center was Vivian's. That drop was brighter in color, with a pinkish purple tint, swaying lightly as if blown by a breeze, always trying to edge toward the other two and always pulling back at the last inch. And the last drop was directly beneath them, as if holding them up, slowly floating upward. That drop was dark purple, a full size larger than the other two, with very faint threads of gold flowing across its surface, like the essence of night.
Three drops of blood. Three colors. Three completely different, breathing powers.
Allen stared at them, his eyes aching, but he couldn't close them no matter what. He heard a wheezing, rattling sound coming from his own throat, as if something were pressing on his windpipe. The air grew heavier and heavier, so heavy his chest felt stifled. The three drops of blood began to turn. Slowly at first, as if someone had stirred water, then faster and faster, faster and faster, until they spun so fast he couldn't even tell the colors apart. They twisted together like three silk threads of different temperatures, wrung tight by an invisible hand. A thin, piercing whine started up, not coming in through his ears but boring in from inside his skull. As if someone were drawing an incredibly fine needle across Allen's temples.
He wanted to cover his ears, but he couldn't lift his hands. The sound grew louder and louder, sharper and sharper, and when it hit its peak, it suddenly cut off. The three drops of blood stopped too. They stopped in midair, already fused into a single thing.
It could no longer be called blood. It was like a very small pearl, or like a seed that could glow. It was dark red all over, but wrapped within it were three lights that kept shifting color. Now the cold red of the vampires, now the pinkish purple of the succubi, now the dark gold of the Demon King showing through. The three colors turned inside it like three living things shut inside a tiny cage. Its surface wasn't smooth; it was covered in extremely fine lines, not decorative patterns but more like veins, like the bloodshot threads in a human eyeball, spreading out from the center and pulsing, in time with Allen's heartbeat.
He smelled blood.
The smell came very suddenly. As if someone had slapped an entire sea of blood against his face. It didn't stink, and it wasn't rank; it was something more primal, a smell that turned Allen cold all over. It drilled in through his nose, poured in through his throat, seeped in through his skin. All the blood in his body seemed to be woken by that smell and rushed desperately in the same direction. The spot on his chest grew hotter and hotter, as if the drop of blood were opening a wound in him. His heart began to beat like mad, so fast it seemed about to leap out from between his ribs.
"It can't wait." Vivian spoke quietly. Her smile was gone now, and there was an unusual seriousness in her voice. "This child's constitution suits it even better than we thought."
"It is not that he suits it," the Demon King said. He stood directly above Allen's head, looking down, the ever-changing bead of blood reflected in his red pupils. "It is that he already is."
Allen's eyes moved and met his gaze. He wanted to ask what "already is" meant. But the Demon King gave him no chance. At that moment the drop of blood sank abruptly downward, as if something below had sucked it in, and with a soft pat it landed dead center on Allen's chest.
This time it really hurt.
Allen's consciousness felt as if it had been ripped violently out of his body and then shoved back in. His body began to convulse wildly on the stone slab, like a fish hauled up onto the shore. His mouth could finally open, but what came out wasn't a scream; it was an extremely long rush of breath that seemed torn from the depths of his throat. He felt as if he'd been set on fire from the inside. What flowed through his veins wasn't blood but magma, a heat that didn't belong to him, born from those three drops of blood. It rampaged through him like three floods pouring into the same riverbed at once. His temples felt ready to burst, his eyeballs ready to leap out of their sockets, and even every strand of his hair seemed to have electricity running through it.
Someone was holding him down. Several hands. Vera was pinning his left arm, Vivian his right shoulder, and there was some other force he couldn't identify, as if reaching up out of the stone slab, clamping his waist and legs. His body arched and fell again and again, the back of his head knocking against the stone over and over until his vision went black in waves. But he simply couldn't pass out. He couldn't even manage that. All he could do was stay awake, stay awake the whole time, while the drop of blood burned him through, inside and out, again and again.
"Just a little more." He heard Vera say it. Her voice was still cold, but it seemed a little closer, as if while she held his arm down she were holding something else down along with it.
"It isn't midnight yet," Vivian said.
Allen could no longer tell what exactly they were doing. He only felt the drop of blood still boring inward, as if trying to squeeze something out of his body. The skin all over his body was glowing, dark red light leaking out of his collar, his cuffs, the legs of his trousers, as if something were about to break free from inside him. He didn't know that it was his original human blood being driven to the outermost edges of his body.
His mouth hung open, his lips parting and closing like a fish about to dry out and die. He desperately tried to grab hold of something, his fingers clawing wildly at the air. He caught someone's hand. Very cold, very slender; it had to be not Vivian's but Vera's. He gripped her wrist so tightly that his nails dug into her skin. But she didn't pull away. She didn't even move. She only turned her hand over and wrapped his hand entirely in hers. That hand was terribly cold, yet in that extreme, searing heat, it gave Allen something to hold on to.
"Don't let go," Vera said.
Allen heard it. He heard it very clearly. The words cut through all those boiling, shrieking sounds and landed straight in his ears. He didn't know whether it was comfort or a command. But he truly didn't let go. He poured every last bit of strength he had into his right hand, clutching that ice-cold hand with all his might, as if afraid he would be swept away.
Another, even more violent wave of heat exploded from his chest. His vision went white, his ears filled with a roaring hum, and at last he couldn't hear anything at all. The world swayed somewhere far away. The last thing he saw was Vera's silver hair sliding down off her shoulder, hiding half her face. Her eyes were still red, very cold, very still, like a lake frozen in winter. He kept looking into those eyes until every light went out, until his whole self seemed dragged down to the bottom of that lake, slowly sinking.
Right before he lost consciousness completely, he heard himself call out a name. Not his own. That woman's.
He called it very, very softly.
So softly it was like a sentence scattered by the wind before it was even finished.